Bronte Media

Continuing to feed its appetite of online lead generation and comparison shopping, Scripps has acquired uSwtich, a firm that helps consumers change power providers and which is branching out into other areas, for 210 million UK pounds (or approximately $16 billion-err $365m US dollars).

Brian has the wrap, including a guest perspective.

Also pertinent is a chat transcript with Farhad Mohat (also discovered through Brian, by the way), the founder of Shopzilla, in an online chat session he did at Wharton University. It is extremely candid (Mohat basically calls the VCs that invested in Shopzilla morons and says they sold too early and for too little). But he has good things to say about Scripps. That they freely admitted they didn’t know the comparison shopping space but were willing to learn with the team.

Scripps, along with Experian, are building out an enviable portfolio of online assets. Are they the next Google or Yahoo? No but they are the next InteractiveCorp.

Scripps also has focussed TV assets that mix well with the growing trends of VoD and the types of content people would pay to see on the Internet (how-to style programming).

With the uSwitch acquisition (and having zero idea about the company) they pick up on two of the most powerful online trends: decision-focused advertising and international (the single greatest financial driver of Yahoo and Google has been international markets catching up to the sophistication of the US).

Rupert and Malone watch out.